Washington Redskins fans celebrate in the stands following a win over the New Orleans Saints on Sept. 9, 2012, at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome. / Derick E. Hingle, USA TODAY Sports

by Erik Brady, USA TODAY Sports

by Erik Brady, USA TODAY Sports

WASHINGTON -- When President Obama said he'd think about changing the name of the Washington pro football club if he were its owner, he was using the authority of his office, the bully pulpit.

The Rev. Graylan Hagler uses his church's pulpit to make a similar point more emphatically. For more than 20 years, on any given Sunday, he has denounced the team name that so many in his congregation have loved all their lives.

Joan Middleton concedes that his sermons equating the R-word to the N-word have changed her mind, slowly, over time. And yet, she says, she just can't let go of her team's totems. They mean too much to her.

"In all honesty, I never thought it was any kind of problem," she says. "Now I understand why it should change, I really do. But I have a lot of the paraphernalia, and I don't want to give it up."

And so on Sundays she drives to the lot behind Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ with a flag of the team's familiar Indian-head logo flying smartly in the breeze from a window of her gray Nissan Maxima.

This largely African-American church in northeast Washington serves as a sort of microcosm of the wider Washington region and the team's national fan base. Some members agree with their pastor that the name should go. Some members love the name unconditionally and hope it never changes. (A cross section of each will watch eagerly Sunday night as Washington plays at the rival Dallas Cowboys on NBC.)

And then there's Middleton's middle ground, her ambivalence a pained prism through which to view competing emotions. Does love of team transcend respect for others? Can a trademark trump a trail of tears? Is it possible to love the team and hate its name?

The long-simmering debate over a two-syllable noun that dictionaries define as offensive appears near full boil. What's different now is the emergence of the Oneida Indian Nation as a full-throated opponent of the name with money to spend on radio ads and a public relations staff to rival the NFL's.

On Monday, the Oneidas held a symposium in Washington to brand the name as a hateful, racist epithet that should be consigned to history's dustbin. Team owner Daniel Snyder wrote a letter released midweek that defended the name on the basis of polling, tradition and childhood memories. It carried a gentler tone than Snyder's barbed statement to USA TODAY Sports in May that he'd never change the name: "NEVER - you can use caps."

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell defended the name in a June letter to Congress but shifted tone over the summer when he said the league should listen to its critics. The Oneidas and the NFL are planning to meet soon to discuss their differences, a big step for the league, which has been staunchly defending the name in trademark court since 1992.

As it happens, that's the year Hagler came to Plymouth. He has been pounding the pulpit periodically on this issue since. Last Sunday, Hagler thanked Obama for his remarks, released a day earlier by the Associated Press.

"The president can't change it, because he's not the owner," Hagler told his congregation. "He can't just give an executive order. But the reality is we join him in solidarity against racism and stereotyping that cause insult and injury."

Actually, not everybody joins in that solidarity. "The name Redskins is part of D.C. culture," says Ashleigh Carter, a student who attends services at Plymouth. "If people find it offensive, that's their issue. I think it would be pretty stupid to change the name."

Hagler says he understands it is hard to let go of symbols that so many have held so dear for so long.

"I get a lot of push-back, but that's OK," he says. "We don't say that word in church, but some say it away from church. I know that. The football team is their religion, too.

"Some people don't think a preacher should rock the boat. I have a fundamental belief that you are not growing unless you are pondering. So even if you are angry about what I am saying, at least you are thinking about it, and that's good."

DETERMINING 'THE TRUTH'

The Washington pro football club maintains that its original owner, George Preston Marshall, named his franchise to honor American Indians. The record does not reflect a man who was enlightened on issues of race.

His was the last NFL team to integrate, and he did so only under threat from the federal government. Bobby Mitchell, who in 1962 was the first African American to play for the Washington team, is a Plymouth congregant.

"He is recovering from surgery and unable to speak just now," Hagler says, "but he is a well-loved member of our church since his playing days."

Mitchell, 78, a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame as a running back and flanker, spent 40 years with the Washington franchise as a player, scout and front-office executive.

"I've never heard Bobby speak on the name issue," says William Easley, a church member since 1982. "He is very low-key on that."

Hagler, senior minister at Plymouth, is rarely low-key. He carries himself with the white beard and thundering authority of an Old Testament prophet, and his sermons take oratory to the level of performance art.

Last Sunday, after 32 deftly cadenced minutes on rekindling the flames of faith, he mopped the flowing sweat from his face with a powder-blue cloth. A week earlier, speaking on the ethics of prosperity, he told his congregation that some members of Congress "would rather shut down the government than give you health care."

Hagler is a past president of Ministers for Racial, Social and Economic Justice. He easily mixes religion, politics - and political football. He was among the panelists who spoke at a day-long symposium on Indian team names in sports at the Smithsonian's Museum of the American Indian in February. (Full disclosure: This reporter was also a panelist.)

"We're here to speak about the Washington professional football team that does not reside in Washington," Hagler said then of a team that plays in Maryland and practices in Virginia. "Whole lot of contradictions here."

Hagler thinks the central one is the team's contention that its name is not offensive when only the offended can really judge that.

"One should not second-guess, and play all types of word games, and try to dance around the subject and make something that is racist, not racist," Hagler said that day. "Or make something that is disparaging, not disparaging. The reality is the reality: A person looks you in the eye and says, 'I'm offended,' then therefore we should regard their truth as truth."

LOVING THE TEAM, NOT THE NAME

When Teddy Roosevelt coined the term "bully pulpit," he was using bully as a synonym for wonderful or good, as in the phrase "bully for you." Speakers at the Oneida Nation symposium this week called Snyder a bully in the more modern sense.

Kevin Gover, director of the Museum of the American Indian, says when Indians were confined to reservations it was "a way to say, 'We own you,'" and use of Indian team names in sports is a way of asserting ownership over native imagery.

Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, a delegate from the District of Columbia, said African Americans should understand the fraught history of racial epithets. It's a thought echoed by several churchgoers at Plymouth.

"As a woman of color, we have to be culturally aware and sensitive to other oppressed people," says Nikki Lewis, co-chair of the church's board of social action. "I'm a lover of the team, but it's not the name that we love, or shouldn't be."

Season ticketholder Venita Phillips used to love the name. "Rev. Hagler turned me around on that," she says.

She still loves the team. "I've reduced myself to only calling them the 'Skins,'" she says. "I still wear the colors, as long as the name is not on it."

She points to the logo covers on the headrests of her car, which have the Indian head in profile, but not the name. A few spaces away, Middleton's car has the same headrest covers. Team magnets are displayed on the trunk.

Middleton is a trustee at Plymouth church. She says she puts that flag on her car at the start of football season every year and doesn't take it down until the season is over.

The minister and the trustee are on different sides of the church aisle on this one, but agree to disagree. Hagler spots Middleton near her Nissan on a sunny Sunday afternoon after services. They hug a long hug right there in the parking lot, and then she drives away, flag unfurled.